By 2008 Russian banks had begun to sense that the new electronic payment services and micropayment systems (EPS) were posing a serious competitive threat in a field long monopolised by banks. As the new payment services offered the general public an extremely user-friendly system, they quickly came to garner a large chunk of the market for financial transactions. These included people sending money to each other for a variety of reasons, buying merchandise from online stores and paying for utilities and other services.

In both Soviet and post-Soviet times, bank cards were a thing of wonderment to the average Russian. Getting one’s wages or making purchases by using a plastic card, whether a credit card or a debit card, was nearly unheard of.

Ultimately, of course, Softwear Finance designs and launches fintech solutions. We started out in 2009 and have enjoyed considerable success ever since. This page is the first in our blog in English as we approach our ambitious goal of reaching out to global markets. At the same time, we’d like to share with our readers some of the remarkable experiences we’ve had in the design of fintech solutions.